Class Dojo for Classroom Management

After sixteen years of teaching I have used the majority of classroom management techniques out there.  Basically most of them use a carrot and stick approach.  Students do the right thing and get the "carrot" or do the incorrect behavior and risk the "stick".  The "stick" could be anything from a negative to a detention or office referral.  More often the "carrot" is the more difficult thing to make appealing to a student. 

Enter "Class Dojo" a very interactive website and application for classroom management.  Class Dojo uses little monsters avatars for your students.  Your students can log in and change their avatar to a custom monster of their choosing.  My 7th graders liked this feature very much it was definitely a "carrot."  The program is very basic.  You choose positive and negative behaviors for your class and then reward or correct students during class.  You can project Class Dojo on a smartboard so that the class can hear and see when a positive or negative is received.  You can also have parents log in to Class Dojo to see how there child is doing or print reports which shows a pie chart of positives to negatives.

All and all, Class Dojo is a very smart techy way of managing the classroom.  I think it would would for very young children all the way up to middle school.  The website can be found here   www.classdojo.com